It’s a long way from Sweden’s cold winters where Rabbi Berel Namdar grew up. He and his wife Tzivia, originally from Tennessee, are moving to Singer Island, Florida, where they will be opening Chabad of Singer Island, the 18th center in the Palm Beach area. The couple was recruited by Rabbis Yosef Biston and Avraham Korf, of Chabad’s Florida headquarters, to serve the larger communities of Singer Island, Riviera Beach, Lake Park, Juno Beach and its environs.
Courtesy of Lubavitch Archives, we present a photo of The Rebbe attending a childrens rally, circa 1960.
This Shabbos at the Besht, Rabbi Yacov Barber, longtime Shliach and Dayan in Melbourne, Australia who currently resides in Crown Heights and is a motivational speaker, life coach and advocate in Beis Din proceedings, will lead a discussion titled “Rabbinic authority, do I have to listen to my rabbi?”
Shlomie and Tzippe (nee Friedrich) Nathanson (Finver) (College Station, TX)
Berel and Mushka (nee Sasonkin) Kesselman (Crown Heights)
Moshe and Mussie Sasonkin (Kent. OH)
As it is customary to check our mezzuzos and tefillin in the month of Elul, we share a letter of the Rebbe about the mitzvah of mezzuza, in which the Rebbe discusses the validity of pointing out the benefit/reward of doing a mitzvah – as when he initiated the mezzuza campaign and pointed out the benefit of a mezzuza. The letter, written originally in English, is from the archives of the Rebbe’s trusted secretary Rabbi Nissan Mindel.
Sholom Ber Borenstein (Italy) and Sara Duato (Crown Heights)
Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries throughout Houston gave the gift of exhaustive material and spiritual sustenance to fellow victims of America’s second most costly tropical storm, Hurricane Harvey, last year. Upon the anniversary of the monumental disaster as the city continues to reflect on and dig out from the nightmarish catastrophe, another gift has been proffered: A new Chabad center in one of the hard hit locales.
With sadness we inform you of the passing of Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu Fogelman OBM, a noted educator who merited to have the Frierdiker Rebbe serve as sandek at his bris. He was 88 years old.
I am the son of Rabbi Chaim Gutnick, who fled Europe during World War Two and made his way to Australia, where I was born. In his work as a community rabbi, my father was very much guided by the Rebbe, and I would like to relate here a few anecdotes which my father had shared with me.
Levi and Debby (nee Nacca) Ladaev (Crown Heights)
Yitzi Katz (Miami, FL) and Chavi Rubin (Crown Heights)
Sixty-one years ago—on the 20th of Elul, corresponding to Sept. 16, 1957—a former Jewish member of independent Latvia’s parliament, the Saeima, passed away in anonymity while imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital in the Soviet Union. His name was Mordechai Dubin, and he had once been a leading figure in pre-war Europe who famously used his considerable political influence for the benefit of Jews in need of assistance.
Leibel Scheiman (Des Plaines, IL) and Nechama Rapoport (Ventnor, NJ)
The 18th of Elul marks the birthday of two “great luminaries,” the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidism and the Alter Rebbe who founded the Chabad movement.
Rabbi Yitzchok Minkowicz, director of Chabad Lubavitch of Southwest Florida, delivers his insights on Parashs Ki Tavo. This week he answers the question: How do we have such a great healthy self esteem? – based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
